Full speed ahead for an IT recovery

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It has been a difficult few years for Australia's university IT
faculties, but as the 2000 tech wreck's IT winter shows the first
signs of thaw, educators feel optimistic about the future.

Despite IT enrolments continuing to decline, by as much as 25
per cent a year at some universities, educators are hopeful that
news of growth in the industry will restore student confidence in
an IT career.

Last year, Victoria's Monash University reduced its University
Admissions Index score for entry to its computer science courses by
five points. It didn't want to do so again this year, so cut places
instead.

The University of Technology Sydney reduced its computer science
requirements by two points, as did the Queensland University of
Technology and Deakin University in Melbourne. Lower scores are the
best indicator of lower student demand.

Yet all signs indicate that there is, or soon will be, a new IT
skills shortage. The cost-cutting of recent years - a natural
reaction to the irrational exuberance of the tech boom - has left
IT departments with minimal inhouse skills, particularly in many
newer areas of technology such as internet security, wireless and
Voice over IP.

Just a few years ago, to be "in computers" was something special
but since Y2K and the dotcom bust, the computer industry has fallen
to earth. Job prospects are bleak, salaries falling, enrolments
down and work moving offshore.

At least that is the perception.

IT has lost its shine, but this is likely to be temporary. Fewer
people entering the industry, and the retirement of many older
workers, means IT workers are again in demand.

For years the Australian Government and many in the IT industry
talked up the lack of IT capability. This continued during the
recent downturn, leading to a significant oversupply of
programmers, business analysts, database administrators.

That oversupply became a political issue in the US, and hard
data from the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and other sources,
indicates that unemployment in the IT industry has been above
average for the past few years.

Add to that the export of many IT jobs to other countries, most
notably India, and it is little wonder that the computer industry
no longer beckons our best and brightest. The computer industry is
now just another profession competing on the jobs market.

A recent survey by the Australian Association of Graduate
Employers found that the number of graduates employed in Australia
this year will grow by 16.6 per cent, but growth in the IT industry
will be marginal.

Now IT spending is picking up again and there is a concern that
we face a severe shortage of skilled practitioners. Fewer school
leavers entering training means fewer graduates in a few years,
just when their skills are likely to be needed most."

The combined impact of falling student numbers and the impending
retirement of thousands of baby-boomer professionals will
significantly reduce the pool of IT workers in coming years," says
Australian Computer Society president Edward Mandla. "Students
continue to abandon IT as a career, with recent research showing
they have little understanding of the various IT roles available
and where IT can take them."

Mandla says the problem is compounded by the lack of a training
culture in the IT departments of many big organisations.

"We have a corporate culture that often requires professionals
to work long hours focused on a particular technology over a number
of years, while giving little priority to retraining workers in new
skills," he says.

Those new skills will be very different than those needed in the
past. Gartner Executive Programs research director Andy
Rowsell-Jones sees signs that Australian companies are starting to
invest in IT infrastructure again, but in a different kind of
infrastructure than they have in the past. Key areas are business
process efficiency, security and customer-management.

"IT is being seen again by Australian companies as part of the
solution, where it used to be seen as part of the cost problem,"
Rowsell-Jones says. "The whole industry is ageing and the
popularity of IT jobs among those of university age is certainly
not as high in Australia as it is in other places.

"There will be judicious sourcing - if you can't get your talent
in-house, you'll get it from someone else. If you can't get it in
the country, you'll import it," he says.

The problems and changes we are witnessing in the IT skills
market are symptomatic of much larger changes in technology, and in
the way that technology affects our jobs and lives.

The IT job market is not dead. It is not even sick. Nor is it
what it was, or will it ever be again. - with Adam Turner,
and Ben Haywood

Business cycles favour job-seekers

Australia's chief information officers agree that economic
conditions rather than any new-found faith in IT will drive
increased investment this year. They also agree with educators and
recruiters that an IT skills shortage is either looming or already
here.

Yet they still worry about picking the right technology for the
long term, especially after recent high-profile mergers.

For Nigel Smyth, CIO of Macquarie Bank, business confidence is
vital. He says IT cycles follow business cycles and it has been a
strong year or two for business, including the financial sector.
"Business is expanding on the back of strong markets," Smyth says,
"and people are wanting to invest after a period of
consolidation."

Martin Cassidy, IT director of NSW Lotteries Corporation, says
every company is driven by its own investment requirements, but in
his case these are steady. Economic confidence also is
improving.

"There's a general feeling the ship is steady," says Cassidy,
who believes a fall in IT undergraduate numbers will have little
effect.

Hemant Kogekar, pictured, Brisbane-based group executive of IT
for Suncorp, disagrees about the long-term effects.

"Australia is not leading in sending jobs offshore and there is
still demand here," he says. "Over a three- to four-year cycle you
may see a shortage emerging. What happens is if there is a
shortage, the cost (of staff) will go up, and that may drive people
to look for alternatives, such as sending work offshore."

He says some big projects, such as the customer relations
management development at Commonwealth Bank, are soaking up many
people. In Brisbane there are candidates available, he says, but
they find jobs faster.

Cassidy agrees: "It's hard to get good people at any level. I
was hiring for a couple of positions and didn't get the depth or
range of people coming through for either technical or managerial
positions."

Macquarie Bank's Smyth, who sometimes works with the University
of Technology Sydney, is finding it harder to secure contractors
and skills, agreeing with Kogekar that any shortage can be expected
to drive up wage costs. "Costs in London and New York are starting
to come up again and we don't think we're far behind here." -
Rob O'Neill

Graduates back in the hot seat

Skills in demand include experience in systems such as
customer-relationship management and enterprise resource planning -
and new voice and data communications technology. Experienced
networking engineers are also in short supply.

Demand for entry-level positions is also rising, but new ICT
graduates are in short supply.

The chief executive officer of national IT recruiter Diversiti,
Deborah Howard, says there was a sharp rise in demand for skilled
IT people in the first few weeks of 2005.

"It is becoming difficult to get quality candidates," Howard
says. "Whereas before, when you put an ad out you would get heaps
of applications, you don't necessarily get that now. There has been
an upturn in demand for people with skills in CRM tools, such as
Siebel, and specific modules of SAP."

She says there is demand for IT workers skilled in mining and
resources, banking and finance industries.

"Given the changes to the immigration points system,
non-resident graduates who have completed their studies are
required to either go (to) regional (areas), continue to study or
are forced to return to their country of origin," Bianchini.

"The lure of working overseas, being attracted to higher
salaries and the opportunity to work on bigger (global) projects
will also see many of our highly skilled ICT professionals lost to
other countries," Bianchini says.

She tips that utility computing - in which computing power is
delivered as it is needed, much like switching on a light or
turning a water tap - wireless networking, Linux and upgrades to
existing enterprise systems will "prove more difficult to source
throughout the year".

Project managers with business acumen are also in demand, says
Peter Acheson, chief executive of recruiting company Ambit.

"As organisations invest capital in IT projects in 2005, we will
see increased skills shortages in specific areas," Acheson says.
"In the past, the market has been happy with project managers with
a strong technical orientation. Now the market wants the strong
technical skills but also good people-management skills and
financial literacy."

Acheson says there is also strong demand for skills in systems
that manage customers such as Siebel and Oracle/PeopleSoft.

"Up until about 12 months ago, organisations had stopped
investing in (customer-relationship management), but now they have
started up again and there is a real shortage of good people," he
says. "In the communications area, the emergence of technologies
like 3G (mobile phones) has led to a situation where it is hard to
find a network engineer."

Some recruiters tell clients to look outside Australia in the
quest for talent. "Overseas is an option," Acheson says. "We
certainly do a lot of overseas recruitment of engineering people,
but by the second half of this year we expect to be doing more in
IT."

He adds that organisations with a need for skills should tap
into the graduate market, "but there are not enough graduates out
there", he says, adding this year's university-leavers will find it
easy to get jobs, especially in banks, insurance companies and
telecommunications carriers.

Diversiti's Howard says the ICT recruitment industry should look
at demand for skills over the next two to five years, lobbying the
Commonwealth to grant access to offshore sources of scarce skills.
"We should involve DIMIA (Department of Immigration, Multicultural
and Indigenous Affairs) in that discussion, so that we can
encourage them to put it back on the hot skills list again."
- Stan Beer

Schools promote IT - just for fun

IT jobs are boring - that's the perception of high school
students, according to a survey by Multimedia Victoria last
year.

Up to 41 per cent of students have some interest in studying IT
at a tertiary level, but a lack of knowledge about the types of
jobs available was the main inhibitor to an interest in an IT
career, the survey found.

These findings have been a particularly strong influence on
Monash University's approach to attracting IT students.

"It's just as important to present IT jobs as being interesting,
interactive, creative, and as inherently satisfying, as it is to
promote an awareness of labour market conditions," says Titian De
Colle, IT faculty marketing manager at Monash.

The university plans to markedly increase its activity -
including visits - in schools this year.

Across the border, in addition to school visits, the University
of Sydney runs a computer science summer camp for year 12 students
to promote the merits of careers in IT.

"I don't think any of the things we are doing are trying to
shift students who are not interested in IT into being interested,"
says Associate Professor Alan Fekete, pictured, acting head of the
school of IT at the University of Sydney.

"It is more trying to convince those who are interested that
there is a place for them in IT," he says.

The University of Sydney and the Queensland University of
Technology are also adjusting their courses to make them more
appealing to school leavers.

Both universities have noticed a trend towards double degrees
and subject combinations that pair IT with another study area.

At the Queensland University of Technology there are already
indications that better double degrees are stabilising
enrolments.

"Last year our enrolments dropped in both single degree and
double degrees. But while single-degree numbers have fallen off
again this year, our double-degree numbers have stayed flat," says
Professor Simon Kaplan, dean of the faculty of information
technology at QUT.

De Colle says: "All sorts of indicators are pointing to a
stronger labour market in IT and ... that will make its way into
schools, and careers teachers will again encourage students to
apply for IT programs. It just takes time." - Ben
Haywood

Case study

E-learning has made a big difference to 100 developers in the
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, in Canberra.
Because the information accessible any time without workers having
to leave their desks, it has led to improved productivity through
less down time, and also better documented code and more efficient
project management.

Barbara Petersen, pictured, director of office computing at the
department, says e-learning eliminated down time caused by sending
groups of people away to do traditional classroom training.

"They would only do the course once, which doesn't suit
everyone's learning style," Petersen says. "And when .NET came in
with its new object-oriented style, if you have a churn of staff,
do you then have to run that course again?"

The solution was to switch from classroom training to outsourced
e-learning from SkillSoft. After 18 months, 80 per cent of the
department's 100 developers have been trained online.

"We are a Microsoft shop so we would question it if they did a
Lotus Notes course," she says.

For an annual fee, courses are available on a per-seat basis.
Although this model is criticised for supplying courses that might
not be used, Petersen says it allows training before a new system
is implemented.

The system monitors individual progress and assigns courses for
staff to complete. Petersen emphasises the need to set out clear
expectations and rules when implementing e-learning.

"Make it part of their performance review and have an ongoing
communications strategy about the availability of courses," she
says. "Then keep an eye on the reports of the take-up."

She believes success within the development group will lead to
e-learning being adopted in other areas of the department. Scope
also exists for the department to develop its own in-house
training, which could then be run on an outsourced platform. -
Eric Wilson

Next Lessons

Problem

Classroom training caused disruption by demanding groups of
developers be absent from their duties at the same time, and was
not always available for new arrivals.

Process

Access to outsourced e-learning was purchased, making courses
freely available to 100 staff, any time, anywhere.

Possibilities

The successful program is likely to lead to e-learning spreading
across the department, particularly in support of the roll-out of
new technologies, such as a planned Office desktop upgrade.

Bottom line

Productivity has increased and costs have fallen, owing to a
better appreciation of development tools, documentation and project
management skills.